An audacious scheme to dupe vulnerable immigrants, as alleged in new court filings in Brooklyn federal court, should serve as a wake-up call for New York’s immigrant communities, the leader of a Queens-based immigrant rights organization said Tuesday.
The elaborate ruse, which featured sham immigration proceedings, duped an untold number of “vulnerable” immigrants into handing over more than $100,000 to defendants posing as lawyers, judges, and other federal officials, according to prosecutors with the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York.
The operation, which ran for over two years, recently came to a head, with the unsealing of indictments against five Colombian nationals, according to prosecutors. Three defendants were arrested last week while trying to board a flight to Colombia at Newark Liberty International Airport. A fourth defendant was arrested at a restaurant in New Jersey, while a fifth defendant remains at large, according to prosecutors…